News Analysis
Some experts said that Israel’s onslaught had left Hezbollah in disarray. Others noted its large weapons stockpiles and history of adapting to battle Israel’s much more high-tech military.
Swaths of southern Lebanon are smoldering ruins. Highways are clogged with thousands fleeing the possibility of an even bigger war between Israel and Hezbollah. As towns and villages prepared for funerals on Tuesday, Lebanon was just beginning to grapple with the fallout from its deadliest day in decades.
A vast wave of Israeli airstrikes on Monday targeting parts of the country where Hezbollah holds sway killed hundreds of people and plunged Lebanon into a deep state of uncertainty over what Israel would do next, how deeply the militia had been damaged and what sort of response its remaining forces could muster.
Israel said it had hit more than 1,000 sites, mostly in southern and eastern Lebanon, aimed at the fighters and military infrastructure of Hezbollah, the Lebanese political party and militia it has been fighting along the Israel-Lebanon border for 11 months. At least 558 people were killed in the strikes, including 94 women and 50 children, Lebanon’s health minister told reporters on Tuesday.
That toll marked a terrible milestone for Lebanon: Monday was the country’s deadliest day since its 15-year civil war, which ended in 1990.
“The victims of a strike by the Israeli enemy on the village of Arnoun. Targeted in their homes!” read text over a photo shared on social media of three women killed in one of the strikes.
The death toll given by the health ministry did not differentiate between fighters and civilians, and the strikes overwhelmingly hit parts of the country where Hezbollah dominates, suggesting that Israel had struck another fierce blow to the group. That capped a week in which Israel also blew up electronic devices distributed by Hezbollah, killing dozens of people and injuring thousands more, and assassinated a group of its military leaders in an airstrike near Beirut.
